


History

by Nope



Series: Companionverse [5]
Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-02
Updated: 2007-02-02
Packaged: 2018-11-05 13:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: One Dennis, twelve Doctors and history





	History

There was a VWOOOSH! There was a room, a very big room, vaguely spherical, with eight doors, countless symbols, three consoles, and thirteen men, aged between quite old and very young.

"Hello," said one, "I'm the Doctor."

"Oh, dear," said Dennis, staring. "He's not going to be happy with me!"

"Who isn't, my boy?" asked the Doctor.

"You!" Dennis frowned. "I mean, the other you. The Doctor!"

"Me?!" cried the Doctor with a comical look of surprise.

"No! The other other you!" Dennis glared at the men surrounding him. "Most people settle on only being one person, you know; I think it's a bit greedy being twelve!"

"Yes, dreadful thing, regeneration," the Doctor said, grinning cheerfully. "Why only the other day I was watching Romana--"

"I really did trade down, didn't I?"

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I say!" The ginger Doctor exclaimed. "It's the young Creevey boy. I thought I recognised you. I haven't seen you since we--"

Dennis clapped his hands over his ears. "No spoilers! No spoilers!"

"--just after we'd been attacked by--"

"LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA!"

"Stop that caterwauling, boy!"

The Doctor pulled Dennis's hand away from his ear. "Now, you listen to me, uh--"

"Dennis," supplied the Doctor. "Dennis Creevey."

"Another stupid ape," muttered the Doctor.

"I don't know, I'm rather fond of them myself," said the Doctor absently, flashing them a distracted, charming smile before going back to the console.

"We're violating the first law of time, mm? Never cross your own timeline, my dear fellow. Never!"

"We could radically alter our own personal history, bringing about catastrophic devastation. And I've only just put the tea on."

"Yes, yes, yes." The Doctor waved them quiet. "Dennis, my boy. Think very carefully. Did you do anything that might have altered the magnetic moment of this atomic nucleus extractor transport system?"

"I have no idea what that even means!"

"He's asking if you reversed the polarity of the neutron flow. Load of old tosh, if you ask me. You know, I once spoke to Leonardo about--"

"All right, all right. There's no need to be going on with it."

"Splendid idea!"

"Clearly we need to come to some kind of consensus. Perhaps if we were to join minds?"

"Oh, that's your answer to everything, isn't it?"

"And I suppose you have a better plan."

"I don't need plans. I improvise!"

"I generally run away, it works surprisingly well."

"Hey," said Dennis, "if you're all you, and some of you are the you after the you that was my you -- which seems to be the only you not here -- shouldn't the later yous already know what you did in this situation in order to fix it, because if you didn't fix it, how would there be later yous here?"

"Ah, the old predestination paradox."

"We don't remember because we won't remember. Time heals itself, you see."

"Strange thing, Time. Already left, haven't arrived..."

"Never cross your own timeline!"

"Yes, thank you, Doctor, we covered that part." The Doctor pulled his glasses out of his pocket and put them on, examining the device. "This is Old High Gallifreyan, isn't it?"

"Does it belong to Rassilon?" Dennis asked. "Like the sash! And the rod! And the crown! And the harp! And the scrolls! And the--"

"Always with the merchandising, that man," complained the Doctor. "We could never convince him that less was more when it--" He noticed all the other Doctors were glaring at him. "By 'we' I mean 'the Time Lords', of course."

"Of course."

"Come here, boy. Show us what you touched."

"I didn't touch anything!" Dennis said automatically. "Anyway, none of the buttons! You told me not to! I mean, you will tell me not to when you're you again!"

"Isn't this Minyan technology?"

"We're on Minyos II!" Dennis said. "You'll say you've always wanted to see what they made of themselves, ever since you ran into them with Leela!"

"Who?"

"Leela! Lovely girl, quite savage. Went off with young Andred, poor fellow. Served as Romana's bodyguard."

"Her third regenerated form was really rather fetching. I remember during that thing with Chronotus and Shada--"

"That wasn't you! That was me -- I distinctly remember punting up the river."

"That was before the Time Scoop altered our personal timeline. That's why I had to go back later to fix it, you see?"

"That makes no sense at all. I don't know why I listen to myself, I really don't."

"Could we try to focus, yes? Mm? Tell us more, boy."

"Yes, lay out the history for us."

"Context is key!"

"Look, it doesn't take all of me to ask Dennis what--"

"Shhh!"

"Um, okay!" said Dennis. "You found a Minyan bracelet thing on Siluria, and you wanted to see what happened to them, so we came here, but then we discovered that the Minyans were suffering some sort of, um, 'decor hear ants plague'? And you said there was clearly something wrong with the time litter, and I said, why would they have one? And you said it was part of their regenerative thing, so I said, wouldn't that be in the hospital? And you said, good idea, so we came and looked and you said everything looked okay up here and the shields were stable, and I said, why does a hospital need force fields because who would attack a hospital? And you said they wouldn't and then you sonic-ed the computers and you found a secret level and you solved some puzzles and then we came in and there were some people and everyone was shouting about time experiments and repeating the mistakes of history and then we ran around a bit, like we usually do, and then we found our way in here, and I pointed at that and said, what does that mean? Because for some reason the TARDIS translation field didn't kick in, and the Doctor read it out and something went VOOooooommmm and all the lights went dim like now, and then everything was blurry, and now there's twelve of you!"

"Decor hear ants plague? I've never heard anything so preposterous."

"It does remind me of something. I think Salvador Dali once said--"

"Shut up."

"You shut up!"

"Did he mean 'decoherence'?"

"That's it!" said Dennis.

"Quantum decoherence. Of course! If they'd tried to modify the time delimitter and failed, it would have set up resonance in the transport beams--"

"--creating bubbles of unactualised instability that--"

"--were instantly magnified when the constraint of the time delimitter was removed--"

"--by whatever vocal command it was that turned it off!"

"I couldn't have put it better myself!"

"Where was the thing you say he read, Dennis?"

"Up there!" Dennis pointed. "What does it say?"

"It says--"

There was a VWOOOSH! There was a room, a very big room, vaguely spherical, with eight doors, countless symbols, three consoles, and two men, aged between quite old and very young.

"..." The Doctor frowned.

"You're back!" said Dennis.

"What about it?" the Doctor asked, trying to look over his shoulder. "Is this about the mole?"

"And all the other yous vanished!" Dennis said. "Did you fix the time delimitter?"

"What are you talking about?" the Doctor complained petulantly. "You're not making sense!"

"You said there were bubbles of unactualised instability that you magnified by turning the malfunctioning time delimitter off," Dennis said, pointing, "by reading that bit of Old High Gallifreyan out loud."

"What," said the Doctor, slipping his glasses on to peer at it. "This bit? But it just says--"

There was a VWOOOSH! There was a room, a very big room, vaguely spherical, with eight doors, countless symbols, three consoles, and thirteen men, aged between quite old and very young.

"...oops!"

"Hello," said one, "I'm the -- do you know, I'm having the strangest feeling of deja vu."

"History repeats," said Dennis, and did his best to look innocent.


End file.
